the amended city charter took place to-day. Considerable excitement had been manifested by the candidates and their friends, and several torch-light meetings and processions, with other popular demonstrations, had been going on for some time previThe total number of votes polled was nearly six thousand. The parties elected were as follows: ous. Mayor.-Charles J. Brenham. Recorder.-R. H. Waller. Public Administrator.-David T. Bagley. City Assessors.—W. C. Norris, George Frank Lemon. APRIL 29th.-Act passed by the Legislature to fund the debt of the State. Bonds to the extent of $700,000 to be issued by the treasurer, in lieu of scrip or other obligations of indebtedness. held by parties against the State. One-half of the sum mentioned is declared payable in New York upon the first day of March, 1855, and the other half, also in the city named, upon the first day of March, 1861. Interest (payable either in New York or at the office of the treasurer) to run upon the bonds at the rate of seven per cent. per annum. Henceforward all State taxes to be paid only in the legal currency of the United States, or in gold dust at the rate of sixteen dollars an ounce, excepting as mentioned in the act. Various declarations are also made for providing the interest, and as to the formation of a sinking fund to redeem the bonds, for payment of the principal and interest of which are pledged "the faith and credit of the State of California." APRIL 30th.-Act passed by the Legislature establishing a State Marine Hospital at San Francisco; and, on 1st May, another act passed to provide a revenue for the same. As both of these acts were amended in the succeeding session, they will be noticed among the events of 1852. MAY 1st.-Act passed by the Legislature, "to authorize the funding of the floating debt of the city of San Francisco, and to provide for the payment of the same." Peculiar circumstances, such as the necessity of grading and improving the public streets, building certain wharves, the purchase of expensive premises for corporate purposes, the monstrous salaries claimed by the boards of aldermen and other municipal authorities, the heavy outlay attending the hospital, fire and police departments, contingent expenses to a very large amount, printing, ($41,905 20 for only nineteen months!) surveying and numberless other charges, had involved the city in an enormous gross amount of indebtedness. By the Comptroller's Report, the total expenditure of the city from the 1st August, 1849, to the 30th November, 1850, was $1,450,122 57; and in the three following months a further expenditure was created of $562,617 53. In the space of nineteen months, therefore, the total expenditure was upwards of two millions of dollars. But as neither the property of the city, which had already been sold to a great extent, nor its ordinary revenues, were adequate to defray this immense sum, the municipal authorities had been for a considerable period obliged to issue scrip, in immediate satisfaction or acknowledgment of the corporation debts. This scrip, as the city got farther involved and could only make payment of its new obligations in the same kind of paper, soon became much depreciated, and was literally in common sale at from fifty to seventy per cent. discount. Meanwhile, nobody would do any business for the city on the same terms as they would for other parties, so long as they were to be paid in this depreciated scrip. The natural consequence was that the municipal officers had just virtually to pay, or rather give their promise to pay, twice or thrice the amounts they would have needed to lay out, if the city had been solvent, with cash in hand to meet all obligations. This circumstance therefore still farther added to the enormous weight of debt. Truly the city seems to have been long considered fair game for every one who had spirit, skill, and corruption enough to prey upon its means. The officials complained that their salaries were paid in depreciated scrip. That was true, and hard enough upon many; but, on the other hand, certain leading office-holders made a fine thing of this same depreciation. They contrived to purchase vast quantities of corporation paper at one-third of its nominal value, which they turned over, in their several departments, to the city at par. In various ways they trafficked in this scrip, and always to their own great advantage. The taxcollector, for instance, refused to receive scrip in payment of license duties and other city taxes, on one ground or other, that it was not yet due, and the like, while instead of paying into the city treasurer the cash which was actually received, he only handed over his own comparatively worthless paper, purchased with the city's cash for that express purpose. The comptroller and treasurer were likewise parties concerned in this species of speculation. Considerable fortunes were thus gained by sundry officials, who could "finesse," and make money in any state of the corporation exchequer. Doubtless they quietly and gaily said to themselves, as the public thought, that "it was an ill-wind that blew nobody good." In those days-so recent, yet in the history of San Francisco so virtually remote-jobbing and peculation were rank, and seemed the rule in the city government. Public honesty and conscientious attention to the interests of the community were solitary exceptions. To such an extent did nefarious speculations in city paper prevail among people high in office, that the Legislature was at last compelled to interfere, and declare it a penal offence for any municipal officer to buy scrip or to traffic in it in any manner of way. Meanwhile the scrip was bearing interest at the rate of three per cent. per month! On the 1st day of March, 1851, the total liabilities of the city were $1,099,557 56. At this time, the whole corporation property, if forced to a public sale, would not have brought one-third of that amount; while, if interest were to continue to run on the debt at the heavy rate just mentioned, the ordinary revenues would have fallen lamentably short of meeting it, after defraying the current expenses. In these circumstances, the act above mentioned was passed by the Legislature. By this act certain commissioners were appointed to manage the proposed "funded debt," who were empowered to issue stock, bearing interest at the rate of ten per cent. per annum, payable half-yearly, in lieu of scrip to a similar amount, which might be presented by holders of the same within a specified time. This funded debt was to be redeemed wholly within twenty years, and particular obligations were laid on the city that the sums necessary to be raised to pay the half-yearly interest, and ultimately the principal, should be solely applied to these purposes. Fifty thousand dollars, over and above the amount required to pay the interest on the stock, were to be levied annually, which sum was to be made use of by the commissioners, under certain restrictions, in buying up, and so gradually reducing the amount of the city liabilities. As the stock thus created was considered to be an undoubted security for the amounts it represented, which the old scrip was not, and as the former soon bore a higher market value than such scrip, the holders of the latter generally took occasion to convert their floating into the funded debt. The small amount of scrip never presented for conversion into stock within the specified time, and which was chiefly held by parties at a distance, was subsequently paid in full by the city. In 1852, a great financial operation of a similar nature took place, by which the then floating debt of the county of San Francisco was converted into a seven per cent. stock. This will be more particularly noticed in its chronological order. MAY 4th. The anniversary of the second great fire was signalized by the fifth, the ravages of which perhaps exceeded, in gross amount, those of all the fires together that had previously taken place in the city. For eight months the inhabitants had enjoyed comparative immunity from conflagration. Although single houses had caught fire, and been consumed, it was not believed that such a dreadful calamity could come as that which now happened. A considerable number of buildings, which were supposed fire-proof, had been erected in the course of the preceding year, the solid walls of which, it was thought, would afford protection from the indefinite spreading of the flames, when fire should unhappily break out in any particular building. But all calculations and hopes on this subject were mocked and broken. The brick walls that had been so confidently relied upon crum bled in pieces before the furious flames; the thick iron shutters grew red hot and warped, and only increased the danger and insured final destruction to every thing within them. Men went for shelter into these fancied fire-proof brick and iron-bound structures, and when they sought to come forth again, to escape the heated air that was destroying them as by a close fire, they So, in these huge, sealed found, O horror! that the metal shutters and doors had expanded by the heat, and could not be opened! furnaces, several perished miserably. their lives in other portions of the burned district, partly by the flames, and partly by the tottering walls falling on and crushing them. The fire began a few minutes past eleven o'clock on the night of Saturday, the 3d of May, in a paint, or upholstery store, on the south side of the plaza. As particular As particular care seems to have been observed in this establishment to extinguish all lights and fires, the sad work was likely commenced by an incendiary. The wind blowing strongly from the north-west, the conflagration proceeded in the direction of Kearny street, and soon swept |